Completely Dissatisfied with the results of Botox and his bedside manner

Treatment Provider

Provider Review

• 29 Oct 2016

Never again. Completely dissatisfied with the results of Botox and the lack of patient care from Dr. Mesa. I went to him on the recommendation of a colleague whose Botox looked pretty natural. I saw him in his Manhattan office, which is a dated and dingy eye doctor’s office — not one piece of equipment I would typically associate with a dermatologist’s office — on the Upper East Side. I thought it was strange that he did the consultation in a poorly lit room where I sat in the chair you typically would have your eyes examined in. It’s like they Airbnb’d a vacant opthamologist’s office. They also made me pay before they administered the treatment. It was the first time I was getting Botox. I’m 36 and don’t have any lines at rest on my forehead and have a few crows feet. He told me I needed 40 units ($20 a pop), which sounded like a lot. And when he showed me where and how many injections he would do, I was like, Whoa. He told me I have very strong muscles in my face. I told him I was nervous and wanted a very light touch — no shiny, frozen forehead or joker eyebrows, etc. so he showed me a bunch of photos of bad Botox and what he considered good Botox. I didn’t see a huge difference. That was basically it. He acted like everything was just easy breezy. I texted my friend that recommended him that I was scared and she told me to “do it.” You have to sign away any liability on their part and they tell you not to be scared of potentially disastrous side effects listed on the release form, which they don’t go into detail about but just print on a page and make you sign it. I asked Dr. Mesa when I would know if I had negative side effects and he said after four days. Then he said “But you won’t have any. The only negative side effect you might have is getting addicted to Botox.” Not going to be a problem. I will never get it again, at least not from Dr. Mesa. Botox doesn’t take effect for a few days. After three days I hated what it did under my eyes. It basically created a paralyzed pocket where the crows feet were and pushed my cheeks down so they looked distorted when I smile or laugh and created puffy bags that I never had before and weird puffy horizontal wrinkles under my eyes. I don’t feel like myself and it’s definitely not an improvement. I would rather have crow's feet. After two days, I emailed his nurse Cristina that I was concerned about the puffiness and she said it sounded “normal.” After five days I emailed again saying I was very unhappy with the results under my eyes and how I looked when I smiled. By the way, there was zero difference on my forehead. It wasn’t smoother at rest and there was little to no decrease in the wrinkles I could make when I scrunched my forehead. It did, however, feel like my head had been set in cement and I had bruises around my eye socket and one between my eyebrows where Dr. Mesa injected my nonexistent “elevens.” He also didn’t prepare me for the pressure and uncomfortable stiffness you feel all around your face. I absolutely hate it. Cristina asked for photos, which I sent showing my new puffy, wrinkled, purple under eye bags and the weird shape of my cheeks. She called me and said she couldn’t tell what I was talking about and when I challenged her she said that side effects like this could happen from crows feet injections but that Dr. Mesa didn’t inject directly under the eye so it wasn’t his fault. Huh? That’s completely contradictory and if new big lines, puffy circles and weird frozen pockets and depressed cheeks were possible side effects, I would have liked to have been warned about it. I told her that $800 later I felt terrible. And she said “I’m sorry. Have a nice day.” And got off the phone. How about put the doctor on the phone? Schedule a follow up appointment? I had to write back again for her to offer for me to talk to Dr. Mesa and schedule a followup appointment a week and a half later. When I went in he was nothing but defensive from the get-go. He barely let me explain what I didn’t like and instead was aggressively using before and after photos they took of me with a relaxed, expressionless face to argue that I looked the same before and after. I agreed that I look the same with a slack face; the issue is when I smile. Finally he admitted that when you inject crows feet, it can affect the movement of your cheeks and make your lower eyelid droops but it’s “a trade off.” I was like, isn’t that something you should mention during the consultation? He said that if he went into detail about all of the possible negative side effects, there would be no time to administer the treatment. Seriously? Basically he wouldn't accept that I was dissatisfied with his work. His bedside manner was atrocious. I felt like I was being cross-examined in a courtroom not in the care of a doctor. I actually tried to leave at one point and told them that I didn’t feel like I was dealing with a doctor and they didn’t seem to want to counsel me, they were just incredibly defensive. Meanwhile, what I wanted to know was when Botox would wear off, if my face would go back to normal and if there was anything I could do to accelerate it. Instead of listening to my concerns and telling me how to fix it or improve the results, the followup treatment was to argue and not accept the fact that I was unhappy. Also, there’s apparently no antidote to Botox so my face will be filled with it — as well as regret — for at least three months.